| This dissertation is a critical ethnographic study of discourses of White womanhood in a communication college classroom. In particular, I focus on the discursive practices that students employed to introduce the topic of race into classroom discussions and their ensuing communication behaviors that served to manage these classroom conversations. In the analysis, I call attention to how students used deflection strategies to divert attention away from discussing the topic of race in ways that privileged, and rarely disrupted, historical and contemporary discursive practices of politeness, goodness, and respectfulness. Deflection strategies also allowed students to collaborate tacitly in the creation and maintenance of a united front where class members, regardless of social identity and position, honored whiteness. Alignment was discursively accomplished in conjunction with the conflicted and contradictory social contexts in which these classroom practices were embedded. I end with discussions concerning the theoretical, empirical, and practical implications and possible contributions of studying how White womanhood is discursively produced, reproduced, and resisted through communication practices in the college classroom. |
